Compensated a little = $15 door fee = $400 for the tournament, seems fair I guess. Do people who bring setups get discounts on door fees? Doesn't look like it. What about the people who ran the stream and the commentators? Again, doubt that happened.
And there wasnt a $15 door fee. There was a $15 - $25 scaling door fee. No one says that TO's shouldn't make money, its that they turn profit at the expense of other people entering. What if the door fee had been $30, or $35, or $40? At what point does it become ridiculous to you, just as a $25 door fee for a hot hotel room is ridiculous for someone else?
There is definitely a point for each individual, and the argument is NOT about "TO's do or don't deserve to be paid for their hard work."
If you had almost double the number of entrants as you had expected to have, then that is the definition of a poorly planned tournament.
And saying that a TO is going to put it towards "the next tournament." It's going toward the down payment for the next venue. Seed money for a higher personal profit. Again, nothing wrong with making money off tournaments, but it isn't accurate to pretend to be sanctimonious about it. If you were actually putting the money towards the next tipped off event, then
I don't even know anything about this tournament (other than the crowd was so bad that hbox flipped them off during grand finals.... are you serious?) or about anyone at the tournament. But the things that you say paint an incredibly wrong picture of what happened at this tournament, and arguing straight past people who disagree with you just makes you seem stubborn.
edit:
I can understand your distaste for door fee. Nobody likes to have to pay money simply to be in a room/building
lol for irony